Fall is definitely the high season for new book releases and author tours. And what a line up we have at The Seattle Public Library! In fact, there are so many events in the next two months that we’re dividing this blog post into parts, starting here with events for September. The events below are all at the Central Library (with $5 evening parking in the Library garage):
Monday, September 19, 7 p.m.: Julie Salamon discusses Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein was the first woman playwright to win a Tony Award. A Broadway powerhouse, a very public figure with a wide circle of friends, she was also a deeply private person. Few knew that Wasserstein was pregnant when, at age forty-eight, she was rushed to the hospital to deliver her daughter three months premature. At the time of her tragically early death less than six years later, few were aware that she was gravely ill.
Tuesday, September 20, 7 p.m.: Adam Hochschild discusses his new book To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.
Hochschild (who also wrote King Leopold’s Ghost) tells the first history of World War I to showcase the war’s critics as much as its heroes and victims, making the point that no war is over as quickly and easily as drum-beaters claim it will be and that almost all wars have enormous unforeseen consequences.
Friday, September 23, at 7 p.m.: Julie Otsuka reads from her new novel, The Buddha in the Attic.
The Buddha in the Attic traces the lives of young Japanese mail order brides who travel to San Francisco in the early 1900s to meet their husbands and create new lives in America. The novel follows Otsuka’s acclaimed debut, When the Emperor Was Divine, featured as the 2005 Seattle Reads selection.
Tuesday, September 27, at 7 p.m.: Ingrid Betancourt discusses her memoir, Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle.
Abducted by FARC rebels in 2002 while campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, Betancourt spent six and a half years as a prisoner of the FARC in rebel camps deep in Colombia’s tropical rainforest. She tells a harrowing account of her time, physically and mentally tortured, and her freedom after a dramatic military rescue in July 2008.
Wednesday, September 28, at 7 p.m.: Laurence Bergreen discusses his new book Columbus: The Four Voyages.
The first major biography of the iconic explorer in more than 60 years shows the madness and genius that only those who traveled with him could have seen. Bergreen’s presentation includes slides showing how Columbus left his mark everywhere he went — and not always for the better. He established a colony that became the town of Santo Domingo; caused 50,000 natives to commit mass suicide; and encountered the sprawling, sophisticated Mayan civilization.
We have a fantastic lineup for October, too, starting with Sherman Alexie at the Ballard Branch on October 1. We’ll post the October author events here on Shelf Talk next week.
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